


A revelation at Christmas dinner

by Vinushuka



Series: After the Ghoul [14]
Category: Dir en grey
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29397186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinushuka/pseuds/Vinushuka
Summary: Toshiya is somewhat hesitant about having a Christamas dinner with Eva and Mari, but goes along as Die is eager to participate. The dinner is delicious but it turns out that there's something going on between Mari and Die about which he and maybe also Eva are kept in complete darkness. To Toshiya's relief the dinner ends without mishaps and, as promised, Toshiya gets to hear the acousting version of Die's new song Kireina Yubi. The song causes an unforeseen turmoil in Toshiya's mind and as a result, he ends up kissing his boyfriend infront of their friends. Finally he knows who he is and what he wants...
Relationships: Die/Toshiya (Dir en grey)
Series: After the Ghoul [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1565338
Kudos: 1





	A revelation at Christmas dinner

I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of having a dinner with Mari and Eva but Die seemed to take the whole thing as an unexpected but welcome adventure. I couldn’t tell if I was more worried about my mate’s reckless attitude or my own contradictory feelings. Eva had tempted me to forget who I was and made me dive into the unchartered waters of sexual pleasure with her. But anyways, here we were, sitting at the dinner table, ready to enjoy a Scandinavian style Christmas dinner that the women had prepared with great effort. I’d better make the most of it; anything else would be considered rude.

“Okay, I must admit that this dinner is by no means an authentic Finnish or Swedish Christmas dinner. We both dislike the heavy rutabaga and carrot casseroles and I hate the lutefisk from the bottom of my heart. So instead, we have used the traditional ingredients in a way we like them and added vegetables and salad to lighten the meal”, Mari explained after bringing the starters to the table. “We will start with a salmon bowl, that contains salted raw salmon, salmon rom, apple chunks, sour cream and chunks of dark sweet ryebread baked in butter. The green thing on top is dill. Enjoy your meal!”

“Can I ask about these bowls and plates? They look very exotic and beautiful… I just wonder where these are from”, I asked Mari intrigued by the red, elaborately decorated tableware.

“Ah, these are from a Finnish designer Klaus Haapaniemi. The series is called Taika, which means magic in English. I got these from my mother as a wedding present”, Mari replied flushing a little and glanced at Die. “Maybe she anticipated that I would miss our homeland Christmas during my stay in Japan.”

“When it comes to selecting drinks for the Christmas menu, it’s somewhat tricky business”, Eva continued Mari’s introduction. “Traditionally people would drink beer or hard drinks, not wine, but we have taken the liberty of recommending beer or light red wine with the main course and white wine with the starters. As non-alcoholic red wines taste terrible, we don’t have any, but we do have non-alcoholic white wine and beer, which both are excellent choices.”

I chose to go with non-alcoholic beer throughout the dinner just to be careful and Die tried out the light red wine. Both Mari and Eva seemed to prefer white and red wines. When our glasses had been filled, we toasted and wished each other Merry Christmas in three languages. After that there wasn’t much conversation. The starter was delicious, and I was ravenous because I had missed my afternoon snack and the dinner was later than I had anticipated. The gingerbread cookies and mulled wine had helped temporarily but, in the end, they only worsened my hunger.

“This was the tastiest starter I’ve ever had “, I told Mari who was sitting beside me at the dinner table. I had Eva sitting opposite of me, and Die was seated beside her.

“Yeah, the dark bread and the salmon are a match made in heaven”, Mari smiled at me. “It’s a Finnish specialty.”

“By the way, how was your garden tour in Japan last autumn? Did your mother enjoy it?”

“She was so eager to visit places that I had difficulties in keeping up with her. She took a million photos and has made several photobooks about our tour”, Mari replied clearly proud of her mom.

“So, she’s as enthusiastic about gardening as about Dir en grey!”, I joked remembering her reaction when I gave her our Unravelling CD signed by myself and Die.

“You don’t say! You must come to our wedding next summer. She’s dying to see you there”, Mari repeated the invitation we had received at their engagement party. It looked like we would have to consider it seriously after all.

Die offered to help Mari with carrying the bowls back to the kitchen and left me to keep company with Eva, which made slightly nervous.

“Can I ask, what happened with Micmoto after you met him at Die’s birthday party? Did you strike a deal with him?”

“Actually, we had a very fruitful discussion afterwards and we decided to promote each other’s products in our web stores. He was interested in my menswear and I loved his jewelry”, Eva replied looking satisfied. “My new webstore is still under constructions so it’s easy to implement changes now.”

I was desperately trying to keep our conversation on neutral ground, but I found myself running out of discussion topics. After another long and slightly awkward silence, Eva went to change the CD playing Christmas music and I sipped my beer listening to the clinking of dishes and laughter coming from of the kitchen. It sounded like Die was having fun…

When Eva returned and sat opposite of me, she took a sip of her white wine and reached out her hand to touch mine. “You’re awfully quiet tonight. Is something wrong?”, she asked looking worried.

“No, not at all. It’s just…”, I replied without knowing what to say.

A particularly loud burst of laughter interrupted my thoughts and made me glance towards the kitchen.

“My, my, you’re jealous of Die!” Eva suddenly realized catching me off guard.

“Err, not jealous, maybe worried is the right word. He is vulnerable right now. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I don’t think Mari is going to hurt him, she’s making him happy. Just listen to them! You should get used to the idea that also other people can make your partner happy. In the long run that will also benefit your relationship.”

I didn’t have a chance to reply because Die and Mari returned to the living room. Die was carrying a large tray that had a big chunk of ham and various kind of fruit on it. Mari brought a large bowl of salad to the table. The interruption was short as they both returned to the kitchen to fetch the remaining dishes of our main course: roasted vegetables and sauces.

When everything necessary was at the table, Mari described in short the contents of the main course: “Our ham is ecologically grown pork meat baked overnight at low temperature to keep the meat juicy. It has been encrusted with mustard and breadcrumbs. The fruit surrounding it are plums, apricots and figs. The vegetables have been roasted in the oven with olive oil and salt. We have there sticks of carrot, beetroot, potato, and rutabaga plus broccolini. The pink sauce is for the veggies and the brown sauce for the ham. The salad contains mixed salad leaves, chunks of apple, figs, mozzarella and some salad dressing.”

“That sounds like plenty of food but definitely delicious”, Die commented and shot an admiring look at Mari, who obviously was our head chef. Maybe cooking was in her genes because her Japanese father was, according to my recollection, a cook.

Die’s analysis of our meal hit the nail on the head. Although I took only two slices of ham and filled my plate mostly with vegetables and salad, I ended up being completely full. “Jeez, I won’t have to eat anything for a week”, I huffed when we had finished the main course.

“There’s always room for a delicious dessert”, Mari grinned as she collected our plates away. “But why don’t you two take a stroll around the garden while we clear the table and prepare the dessert.” With ‘we’ she meant herself and Die. “It will take a while, so there’s no hurry.”

“There’s a full moon outside”, Eva remarked and winked an eye at me. 

I couldn’t figure out what full moon had to do with it, but the idea of having some exercise and fresh air in the garden felt excellent. The path around the garden was lit by lanterns and the ground was flat so there was no risk of tripping in the dark. We didn’t need any accidents that might lead to a rescue operation tonight. We picked up our overcoats from the entrance hall, slipped our feet into garden shoes on the back porch and headed to our garden tour.

“This time of the year in Japan is so much different from where I come from. We might have 50 cm of snow and -15°C on Christmas Eve”, Eva sighed as we were slowly walking along the sand path leading to the back of the garden. The garden layout was familiar to me as my own garden looked much the same, only the selection of plants was different.

“The winter will be in full swing when you return to Sweden. You can go skiing then”, I comforted her when I realized that longing for home was making her sad.

“We are moving to the southern part of Sweden where there might not be snow at all. I spent my childhood up north where the winters were always snowy. But we are planning to have a winter holiday at a skiing resort in February.

“We will start a tour in February”, I said thinking how quickly the time flies. It was like we had returned from our USA tour only yesterday. Yet so many things had happened after our return: I had started my modelling career and struggled free from my Kyo-addiction and Die had finally committed to our relationship.

We sat down on a bench beside a small water feature and watched the lanterns reflecting from the rippling water surface.

“We would really appreciate if you would come to our wedding. It will take place in Finland at Turku archipelago in June. You would have a chance to see the nightless night and the mosquitos trying to eat you alive”, Eva grinned and gave a kiss on my cheek.

“We’ll do our best to there”, I promised. “I think we don’t have any tours in our calendar then but there might be other stuff like recordings planned for that period.” I was sure that Die wouldn’t object if there was an exciting adventure ahead.

While we sat there, I noticed that Eva was shivering of cold. I drew her closer trying to warm her up, but it didn’t help much. “Maybe we should go back to the house. I don’t want you to catch a cold”, I proposed and glanced at my watch. We had been on our garden tour about twenty minutes now.

When we entered the living room, Mari was laying the table with glass plates her cheeks glowing and her hair in slight disorder. Die was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t have time to ask about his whereabouts, when Die turned up looking exceptionally radiant and flashed his best smile at me.

“Ah, you’re back. How was your walk?” he asked while he started to help Mari with the plates and glasses.

“Refreshing but a bit chilly”, I replied and nodded towards Eva and her red nose. “I hope you’re not burning anything in the kitchen”, I remarked when I noticed a strange smell floating around.

“I managed to burn a plate of cookies in the oven a while ago”, Mari confessed and blushed somewhat more. When she shot a quick glance at Die, I started to doubt that he had something to do with this incident.

“Don’t worry, there are more cookies coming up. I have a timer…” Just when Die mentioned that, the timer in his pocket buzzed and he had to hurry to the kitchen before these cookies too would be charred.

“Why do I have the feeling that they didn’t tell us the whole story”, I wondered after Mari had followed Die to the kitchen.

“Perhaps it’s better that we don’t know all the details”, Eva murmured and stroke my back slowly with the palm of her hand. Her touch made my heart skip a beat and sent shivers of pleasure radiating through my body. The memories of our night together returned as vivid as they had happened just five minutes ago.

I turned towards Eva and stroked her cool cheek with my fingers. “You just made me want to kiss you… May I?” I asked although my body was longing for something else.

“Yes, please… because it’s Christmas…”, she replied leaning closer. The touch of her soft lips was heady, so that I had to cling to her body with my both hands. Her silky evening dress felt almost like the naked skin of her body, the body I had studied thoroughly during our night.

“Err… excuse me”, I heard Die’s voice somewhere close. “It’s dessert time.”

“Ah, thank you!” Eva muttered and straightened her dress with her hands breathing a bit too heavily.

At first, I felt embarrassed but when Die didn’t seem to mind, I relaxed and offered Eva a chair at the table.

The dessert was served on black rectangular plates that went onto the glass plates already at the table. The portion had a small chocolate fondant decorated with strips of caramelized orange peel, a ball of ice cream with a cookie stuck into it and red berry sauce and cookie crumbs strewn artistically around the plate.

Although I had been completely full half an hour ago, the sight of this beautiful dessert almost made me drool.

“Anyone wanting to taste our home-made quince liqueur, please raise your hand”, Mari announced with a small bottle of golden liquid in her hand. “It’s of my mother’s making. She’s had quince growing in her garden for years.”

As the glassed on the table looked small enough, I raised my hand along with everyone else at the table. I could handle one tiny drink without making a fool of myself. When Mari had filled our glasses, Eva proposed a toast for the coming year and all the wonderful things that would happen then. I admired her optimism because the world tended to be an unpredictable and unjust place nowadays.

The dessert was a perfect ending to our dinner party but there was still one thing missing: Dies new song.

“Dear ladies”, I raised my voice to get some attention. “I asked Die to take his guitar with him, because he had promised to play his new song ‘Kireina Yubi’ for me. As you all know, I and Eva weren’t able to listen to it at his birthday party because Eva sprained her ankle. If you don’t mind, Die will play an acoustic version of the song for all of us tonight.”

“Of course, we don’t mind. I would very much like to hear it too. Mari has praised the song ever since it was performed for the first time”, Eva said full of anticipation. 

“Actually, there’s one more thing. Mari will join the chorus with me because I’m not much of a singer yet”, Die announced humbly and beckoned Mari to join him.

To be honest, I was completely overwhelmed by that song. I had no idea that the melody would be so beautiful and Die’s singing so gentle and kind. Tears kept running down my cheeks right from the beginning and when Mari’s strong voice joined his I just lost it completely. Eva held my hand and wiped the tears from my cheek.

When the song came to an end I jumped up and rushed over to give him a hug.

“Thank you! That was the best Christmas present ever”, I whispered trying to control my desire to kiss him.

“C’mon, don’t be shy! Just kiss him”, I heard Eva’s voice urging me as if she could read my thoughts.

Before I knew it, I was kissing my boyfriend for the first time in public, in front of our friends. The feeling was absolutely intoxicating, without a trace of shame or regret. Up to this moment I’d had these nagging doubts that maybe there was something wrong with me and I should try to change back to normal. But now I knew it was okay to feel the way I felt and to be what I was. And most importantly, I knew with whom I wanted to spend my life for better or for worse till death do us apart.


End file.
